Could Foxconn be the tech company scouting Capital Region?

Foxconn, the Chinese company that assembles the iPhone for Apple Inc., is considering building a manufacturing site in the United States, numerous media outlets are reporting.

Could the Capital Region be one of the sites that the company is looking at?

It’ s possible, although it would seemingly contradict a Times Union story that a chip manufacturing company requiring enormous amounts of water and electricity is scouting local industrial parks for a site.

Foxconn doesn’t make chips, but rather assembles electronics such as the iPhone and LCD TVs. The media reports say that the factory could be considered to make LCD TVs to take pressure off the company’s iPhone manufacturing, which is highly complex and labor intensive.

However, Foxconn does report in its 2010 annual report that it goes through 19 billion gallons of water a year at its manufacturing sites, about 52 million gallons a day. A typical chip fab uses 4 million to 6 million gallons of water a day.

And, like chip factories, LCD TV factories are known to use millions of gallons of ultra-pure water per day.

Several media outlets are reporting that Foxconn is also interested in training engineers for the U.S. expansion in China and Taiwan and them sending them back to the United States to oversee manufacturing here. An alliance with MIT is reportedly being discussed.

7 Responses

If Foxconn is looking for a site in New York that offers an abundance of water and electricity, they need not look any further than the former International Paper Company site, located in Saratoga County, in the Village of Corinth. The site features unlimited access to the water of the Hudson River, hydroelectric power, direct rail access to and from the facilities, and a state of the art treatment plant for sewage. In addition, there is an abundance of land near by for expansion. The site is located 7 miles west of Exit 16 on the Northway.

Given the fact that China would love to get its hands on the latest chip technology and surely would like to see that technology used in a chip fab plant in China ….you have to wonder!!!!

As the rumors fly wasn’t one of the latest that IBM wanted to off load (sell) its fab plants to Gloflo? Given Gloflo’s losses of around $2.5 billion from inception through June 2012 ….you have to wonder!!!

Another rumor that is interesting is that Singapore is unhappy with the $ amount of capital expenditures by Gloflo into the Singapore fab plants. As a result they have been looking for other chip fab plants to be built there. Foxconn anybody?…you have to wonder!!!

Abu Dhabi has its hands full trying to make Gloflo profitable. Now with AMD clearly in financial distress Abu Dhabi has put a second person on AMD’s board, perhaps to stem the losses. Layoffs have been announced at AMD and it has entered another re-structuring stage. Keep in mind AMD is approximately 20% owned by Abu Dhabi, 100% of Gloflo is owned by Abu Dhabi and both are losing money – how long is Abu Dhabi going to tolerate this?…..you have to wonder!!!

Maybe we need to just sit back and see what happens. The politicians will make all the decisions for the economic future of the area. With all of the touted success of Gloflo in Saratoga County and Nanotech in Albany County why are both counties in such horrible budgetary shape?…..you have to wonder!!!

I’m regularly in contact with all of the major Upstate, NY commercial real estate firms (CB Richard Ellis, NAI Platform, Ikon, Prudential Blake, etc), and absolutely no one has shown any sites, nor can even vouch for fielding a call from any major manufacturing firm looking for sites whatsoever.

NY state is a horrible place for business. First you have anti-business regulations, the threat of unions, and a state income tax that punishes earnings at 8.83%. Now, if I read this rumor in a Texas, South Carolina, or Arizona based newspaper, I might consider the rumor as at least a possibility. However, in NY, not a chance in the World.